Kurt Elling shows off his funk chops in Indy Jazz Fest appearance at The Cabaret

I might be something of a moldy fig when it comes to what I like about Kurt Elling's singing. Based on his

Portrait of a versatile vocalist: Kurt Elling

recordings about the turn of this century, and dating up to his featured appearance at a jazz-piano competition here in 2019, here's the portrait of the artist that's been engraved in my mind: A personal, virtuosic extension of swinging crooners like Frank Sinatra and Billy Eckstine, with a valuable side trip to Johnny Hartman, blended with the verbal facility and scat mastery of Mel Torme and Jon Hendricks.

Miles Davis had a salty putdown of fans baffled by his stylistic changes. "So, m-f, am I supposed to wait for you to catch up?" is what I remember reading about his acid riposte to a disappointed fan.  (You can bet that "m-f" is not an exact quote.) 

Fair enough: I have not caught up with Elling's transition, though what I heard as he fronted the band SuperBlue at the Cabaret sounded like a predictable development of some of his signature skills. 

In the second set — despite roaming spasmodically around the Cabaret stage, shoulders pumping, struck and shaken tambourine in hand — the 55-year-old singer evinced creditable links with his past achievements: the astonishing range, quickly accessed in all registers; the variation in tone and volume, aided by artful positioning of the microphone; the world-class intricacy of swing (though that tends to be flattened out when the bluesy needlepoint of funk dominates). It was all there, in a form that might suit the singer's search for artistic breadth,  but otherwise let some well-honed virtues and repertoire insight lapse.

His principal sideman is the guitarist Charlie Hunter, whose eight-string instrument and expansive use of it makes him a one-man band even when he's consistently an amiable colleague. In the course of the set, the outsize facility of keyboardist Julius Rodriguez and a drummer whose full name I didn't catch (though it didn't sound like the name linked to SuperBlue online) also created a formidable partnership for the singer.

My difficulty with the set started right off. In his determination to present a wall of sound in which his singing was just one feature, Elling allowed himself to be unintelligible. Thus, a singer known for his loving, even caressing, verbal vividness had discarded an ace or two out of his usual full deck. Some of the wonted clarity emerged in a soul ballad or two later, fortunately. 

I'm sure a previous set, plus the predictable sound check before the gig, had gotten the mix at the Cabaret just the way it was meant to be. So the SuperBlue vibe was intact, I have to concede. But I will freely admit to being left behind by much of the music. That's part of the history of jazz festivals, which have to consider marketability as well as genre-bending.

But not since Terence Blanchard presented his E-Collective new sound at the Jazz Kitchen two years ago have I witnessed an artist sidetrack so conclusively how he got to the party in the first place. And no, I don't expect Elling to wait for me to catch up.